Programs have been created for use designing and otherwise defining the layout of documents and other publications. Certain of these programs are utilized within distributed computing environments, and allow definition of a template for a publication. The template may be interactively developed by a designer and will often specify the collections of text and shape elements defining the pages of the publication. For example, the attributes of the text elements which may be defined by the template may include, for example, font, size and color. In certain systems the template is designed to accommodate “variable data” or “variable content”, which means that users of the template are permitted to insert individualized content into some or all of the text and shape elements of the template. In this way a template file functions to specify the manner in which the pages of a publication are to be generated in response to variable content provided by a user.
In certain systems the variable content or other personalized data may be sourced by a remote database in communication via the Internet with a “publishing” server configured to generate variable data publications using predefined templates. For example, in order to create a mass mailing the personalized data may be received by the publishing server one record at a time from the remote database. In response, the publishing server generates a series of personalized documents for mailing to a set of recipients. Alternatively, the variable content may be entered by a user into an HTML form generated by the publishing server and displayed upon the user's client computer (e.g., in order to create a business card). In either case the variable content may be stored by the publishing server as a delimited data file, such as a tabbed-delimited file or a comma-delimited ASCII file. This data file may then be passed to a composition engine or the like executed by the publishing server, which produces a corresponding customized document for the user.
In order to facilitate variable data document creation, the assignee of the present invention has developed an Internet-based platform to enable a designer to create a shell or template document which another person (e.g., a print buyer) may customize, preview and order copies for printing. Once the designer has uploaded the template document to the Internet-based platform, the designer is given the opportunity to specify which information should be provided by a user (i.e., the print buyer) via an HTML form prior to ordering a one or more copies of the resulting customized document. The Internet-based platform then dynamically builds the HTML form through which the user may enter the requisite variable data content. However, this approach requires the template designer to access the Web-based platform after the template has been uploaded in order to provide information used in creating the HTML form, and considerable effort is required to configure the Web-based platform to create the HTML form on the basis of the completed template. Moreover, this approach does not permit the template designer to specify details of the structure, organization or “look and feel” of the HTML form presented to the user.